Midnight Awakening by Lara Adrian

Midnight Awakening by Lara Adrian

With a dagger in her hand and vengeance on her mind, Darkhaven beauty Elise Chase prowls Boston’s streets in search of retribution against the Rogue vampires who took from her everything she cherished. Using an extraordinary psychic gift, she tracks her prey, well aware that the power she possesses is destroying her. She must learn to harness this gift, and for that she can turn to only one man—the deadliest of the Breed warriors, Tegan.

No stranger to loss, Tegan knows Elise’s pain. He knows fury, but when he slays his enemies it is with ice in his veins. He is perfect in his self-control, until Elise seeks his aid in her personal war. An unholy alliance is forged—a bond that will link them by blood and vow—and plunge them into a tempest of danger, desire, and the darkest passions of the heart. . . .

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape recounted
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a son
  • Torture recounted
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The Blue Between Sky and Water by Susan Abulhawa

The Blue Between Sky and Water by Susan Abulhawa

Violently pushed from their ancient farming village of Beit Daras, a Palestinian family tries to reconstitute itself in a refugee camp in Gaza. The men here, those who have escaped prison or the battlefields, worry over making ends meet, tend their tattered pride, join the resistance. The women are left to be breadwinners and protectors, too.

Nazmiyeh is the matriarch, the center of a household of sisters, daughters, granddaughters, whose lives threaten to spin out of control with every personal crisis, military attack, or political landmine. Her brother’s granddaughter Nur is stuck in America; her own daughter’s son, traumatized in an Israeli assault, slips into another kind of exile; her daughter has cancer and no access to medicine. Their neighbor, the Beekeeper’s wife, will extract the marijuana resin to shrink her tumor, but it is also Nazmiyeh’s large heart and zest for life that heals, that will even call Nur back from the broken promise of America and set her on a new path.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Paedophilia & child sexual abuse
  • Child neglect
  • Eating disorder (bulimia)
  • Emesis
  • Torture, implied
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Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa

Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa

Forcibly removed from the ancient village of Ein Hod by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, the Abulhejas are moved into the Jenin refugee camp. There, exiled from his beloved olive groves, the family patriarch languishes of a broken heart, his eldest son fathers a family and falls victim to an Israeli bullet, and his grandchildren struggle against tragedy toward freedom, peace, and home. This is the Palestinian story, told as never before, through four generations of a single family.

The very precariousness of existence in the camps quickens life itself. Amal, the patriarch’s bright granddaughter, feels this with certainty when she discovers the joys of young friendship… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Rape
  • Torture
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The Places I’ve Cried in Public by Holly Bourne

The Places I’ve Cried in Public by Holly Bourne

Amelie loved Reese. And she thought he loved her. But she’s starting to realise love isn’t supposed to hurt like this. So now she’s retracing their story and untangling what happened by revisiting all the places he made her cry.

Because if she works out what went wrong, perhaps she can finally learn to get over him.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Emotional & verbal abuse
  • Rape
  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
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A Wicked Magic Is by Sasha Laurens

A Wicked Magic by Sasha Laurens

Dan and Liss are witches. The Black Book granted them that power. Harnessing that power feels good, especially when everything in their lives makes them feel powerless.

During a spell gone wrong, Liss’s boyfriend is snatched away by an evil entity and presumed dead. Dan and Liss’s friendship dies that night, too. How can they practice magic after the darkness that they conjured?

Months later, Liss discovers that her boyfriend is alive, trapped underground in the grips of an ancient force. She must save him, and she needs Dan and the power of The Black Book to do so… Read more.

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Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Parental abuse
  • Statutory rape
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Self-harm
  • Religious cults
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The Weight of a Soul by Elizabeth Tammi

The Weight of a Soul by Elizabeth Tammi

When Lena’s younger sister Fressa is found dead, their whole Viking clan mourns—but it is Lena alone who never recovers. Fressa is the sister that should’ve lived, and Lena cannot rest until she knows exactly what killed Fressa and why—and how to bring her back. She strikes a dark deal with Hela, the Norse goddess of death, and begins a new double life to save her sister.

But as Lena gets closer to bringing Fressa back, she dredges up dangerous discoveries about her own family, and finds herself in the middle of a devastating plan to spur Ragnarök –a deadly chain of events leading to total world destruction.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Arranged marriage
  • Attempted rape
  • Murder
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The Grace Year by Kim Liggett

The Grace Year by Kim Liggett

No one speaks of the grace year. It’s forbidden.

In Garner County, girls are told they have the power to lure grown men from their beds, to drive women mad with jealousy. They believe their very skin emits a powerful aphrodisiac, the potent essence of youth, of a girl on the edge of womanhood. That’s why they’re banished for their sixteenth year, to release their magic into the wild so they can return purified and ready for marriage. But not all of them will make it home alive.

Sixteen-year-old Tierney James dreams of a better life—a society that doesn’t pit friend against friend… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Misogyny
  • Statutory rape mentioned
  • Sexual assault mentioned
  • Suicide
  • Childbirth
  • Scalping & skinning, off-page
  • Dismemberment mentioned
  • Cannibalism mentioned
  • Starvation
  • Death of a friend
  • Poisoning
  • Torture
  • Lynching
  • Animal death & abuse
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The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson

The lonely young Appalachian woman joins the historical Pack Horse Library Project of Kentucky and becomes a librarian, riding across slippery creek beds and up treacherous mountains on her faithful mule to deliver books and other reading material to the impoverished hill people of Eastern Kentucky.

Along her dangerous route, Cussy, known to the mountain folk as Bluet, confronts those suspicious of her damselfly-blue skin and the government’s new book program. She befriends hardscrabble and complex fellow Kentuckians, and is fiercely determined to bring comfort and joy, instill literacy, and give to those who have nothing, a bookly respite, a fleeting retreat to faraway lands.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Rape
  • Suicide
  • Medical experimentation
  • Death of a child
  • Murder
  • Poverty themes
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The Giver of Stars by Ann Napolitano

The Giver of Stars by Ann Napolitano

Alice Wright marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve hoping to escape her stifling life in England. But small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic, especially living alongside her overbearing father-in-law. So when a call goes out for a team of women to deliver books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt’s new traveling library, Alice signs on enthusiastically.

The leader, and soon Alice’s greatest ally, is Margery, a smart-talking, self-sufficient woman who’s never asked a man’s permission for anything. They will be joined by three other singular women who become known as the Packhorse Librarians of Kentucky… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Racism
  • Attempted rape
  • Incest
  • Domestic abuse
  • Imprisonment
  • Animal cruelty
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Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center

Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center

Cassie Hanwell was born for emergencies. As one of the only female firefighters in her Texas firehouse, she’s seen her fair share of them, and she’s excellent at dealing with other people’s tragedies. But when her estranged and ailing mother asks her to uproot her life and move to Boston, it’s an emergency of a kind Cassie never anticipated.

The tough, old-school Boston firehouse is as different from Cassie’s old job as it could possibly be. Hazing, a lack of funding, and poor facilities mean that the firemen aren’t exactly thrilled to have a “lady” on the crew, even one as competent and smart as Cassie. Except for the handsome rookie, who doesn’t seem to mind having Cassie around… Read more.

GoodreadsThe Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

  • Fatmisia & body shaming
  • Slut shaming
  • Rape recounted, off-page
  • Attempted suicide
  • Addiction
  • Terminal illness
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